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Ingress Anime Casts Virtual YouTuber Kizuna Ai

The official website for the Ingress anime based on Niantic's AR game announced on Wednesday that "virtual YouTube" character Kizuna Ai will guest star in the anime's ninth episode, which will air on December 12. Her role in the anime has not yet been revealed.

Additionally, Ingress' Artificial Intelligence character ADA, voiced by Megumi Ogata, appeared on Kizuna Ai's YouTube channel as part of the collaboration.

The "(self-proclaimed) world's first virtual YouTuber" Kizuna Ai debuted in December 1, 2016 and has since garnered over 2.2 million subscribers on her main A.I.Channel and over 1.1 million subscribers on her A.I.Games channel. She also voiced a character in the Magical Girl Site anime.

ADA has already appeared in a series of YouTube videos titled "ADA no Heya" (ADA's Room), in which she interviews cast members from the show, including Reina Ueda (Sarah), Yoshiki Nakajima (Makoto), and Ogata.

Ingress premiered on Fuji TV's "+Ultra" programming block on October 17. The anime will stream worldwide on Netflix. In Japan, all the episodes premiered on Netflix on Thursday.

The show's English website describes the story:

Since he was little, Makoto had a strange power which enabled him to read the memories of objects he touched.
Hiding his uncontrollable power, he works as a special agent in the police force. One day, while investigating an explosion at a laboratory that researches a unknown substance called “XM”, he sees a mysterious memory.
The memory was from Sarah's ring, who was the sole survivor of the accident.
It was a sight of a person being swallowed into a red light and disappearing.
Makoto becomes embroiled in a massive conspiracy.
The battle for “XM”, a material that could affect human mind, starts now――

The anime stars:

Yoshiki Nakajima as Makoto

Reina Ueda as Sarah

Shigeo Kiyama as Jack

Hiroo Sasaki as Hank Johnson, who also appears in the original game

Tarusuke Shingaki as Christopher Brandt

Kōsuke Toriumi as Liu Tien Hua

Kentarō Tone as Zion Kunikida

Niantic launched Ingress in 2012, and the company revealed a sequel titled Ingress Prime in December. The new sequel is slated for this fall. The game has a "real-time story" that takes place in the same timeline as the game's anime adaptation. The story begins in Sapporo, and follows the trail of the anime's characters Sarah, Makoto, and Jack leading up to the anime's premiere. The in-game story will be split into various parts embedded in regional Portals. Players must to work together to solve the mystery and complete the story.

Yūhei Sakuragi (The Relative Worlds) is directing the anime at Craftar with assistant director Yoshinari Irikawa, and Sōki Tsukishima (Final Fantasy Type-0: Change the World novels) and Tora Tsukishima are writing the scripts. Hidehiro Kawai (The Relative Worlds, Phantom of the Kill -Zero Kara no Hangyaku-) is composing the music. Takeshi Honda (Beyond, Blue Submarine No. 6, Den-noh Coil, Millennium Actress) is credited with the original character designs. Atsushi Furukawa is the CGI director, and Hiroshi Katō (Totonyan) and Hirofumi Sakagami are directing the art with assistance by Hōmi Arai. Masashi Miyaoka is serving as modeling director. Maru Kobayashi is the animation director, and Tatsuya Nomura is the director of photography. English indie rock band Alt-J are performing the anime's theme song "Tessellate."

The app has inspired several manga adaptations.

Sources: Ingress anime's website, Animate Times